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I would jump up and down and say "First post!" but that's immature and brings back a bad CompuServe memory, so instead I'll just ask how to get Pepsi off a Dell LCD flat-panel monitor.
"Non-fiction novels" indeed.
Love the hamsters.
Right behind the Almanac fiction and next to the books on how to square the circle. (take a left at the table displaying books on the vast left Wing Conspiracy)
Maybe I haven't had enough coffee yet, Teresa, but, well, what??
When I worked at Natural Wonders during the long, long years of retail management hell, I had a customer call and ask me if we carried any globes that were "smaller versions of the earth." I couldn't resist and answered that I was really sorry, but all of our globes were actual size.
We kept them in off-site storage.
That's what I get for looking at the thread prior to looking at Particles. Not enough coffee indeed.
I worked in bookstores in high school and college. My favorite query was, "I'm looking for a book, but I can't remember the author's name or the title. But it was blue, and it was on a bottom shelf."
Oh, yeah, that blue book on the bottom shelf! I'll ring it right up for you, sir.
Hm. Does 1984 qualify as non-fiction now?
Wait. Wasn't In Cold Blood considered a non-fiction novel? Capote claimed it was. Lots more references here.
Alex Cohen: When I was in library school, my advanced reference course ended with group presentations on a subtopic. When my group of about 5 people went to look at one of the books again, those of us who had diligently recorded the call number started scanning the general section in order. While we were still looking, the classmate who had instead written down "corner bookshelf, third shelf down, small blue book fourth from the left" went right to it. As we pointed out to her at the time, this works very well--until they shift the collection!
--Mary Aileen
You'll find some in Authors under "Graves, Robert."
(Just don't confuse it with the later Burroughs-crossover-sequel, Me Claudius.)
Ahh, the bookstore.
I was just reminiscing this weekend. Some of my favorites:
From my time at the 82nd st B&N in NYC:
CUSTOMER: Where are your books on extraterrestrial insects?
ME: (after having tried diligently with a keyword search) Well sir, nothing comes up with those keywords, but if you don't mind browsing, I can show you where we keep our science fiction...
CUSTOMER: No! Not fiction! I want non-fiction books on extraterrestrial insects!
somewhat related, the annoyed customer who told me, "You know, you really have a lousy beekeeping section at this store!"
Sometimes there are just misunderstandings, like the customer I was leading to the religion section before he corrected me and told me he was looking for books on CHEESES, not JESUS. At least he was cool, laughed and said better I accidentally show someone books on Christ when they were looking for cheese than the other way around.
Much nicer than that little 11 year-old punk and his Ornithopter question...
The phone customer who took advantage of my helpful nature and expertise in the self help/sexuality department for about 5 minutes before I realized he was just trying to get me to talk dirty to him. (not for $6.50 an hour I don't.)
I'm sure there are ones from when I worked at Shakespeare & Co, but I can't remember them off hand.
In Wisconsin -
"I'm looking for something for my daughter's english class," reading off a crumpled piece of paper "I think it's called "Hamnet", and it's by Max Beth." (after much discussion, customer conceded I might be right, but she wasn't sure if her daughter needed Hamlet or Macbeth.)
But then, Shakespeare seems to be a common problem with some customers.
CUSTOMER: I need this book. It was a movie, and the book is by Michelle Pfeiffer. I think it's called 'Summer Dream'.
ME: Oh, you mean "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
CUSTOMER: Yes! That's it!
ME: That's a play by William Sh -
CUSTOMER: No! Not a play! It's a book! And Michelle Pfeiffer wrote it.
The guy who asked me (apparently) suggestively "Do you have any books on the Peloponnesian War?" After he had gone, several co-workers told me he was hitting on me! Damn! I totally would have gone out with a guy who asked that. Curse my denseness, I may have missed my soul-mate.
The guy who attempted to hit on me by suggestively asking for every "fat lady" magazine in existence and waggling his eyebrows. So obvious, even I got what he was doing. And ick.
Well, Michelle Pfeiffer did star in the 1999 movie. So that customer was confused (and insistent, which always blunts my sympathy a lot), but not totally out of left field.
Answer.com has:
"A factual or historical narrative written in the form of a novel: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is a nonfiction novel."
George Plimpton wrote
[New York Times, Book Review Section,
January 16, 1966]:
The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel
By GEORGE PLIMPTON
"In Cold Blood" is remarkable for its objectivity--nowhere, despite his involvement, does the author intrude. In the following interview, done a few weeks ago, Truman Capote presents his own views on the case, its principals, and in particular he discusses the new literary art form which he calls the nonfiction novel...
Why did you select this particular subject matter of murder; had you previously been interested in crime?
Not really, no. During the last years I've learned a good deal about crime, and the origins of the homicidal mentality. Still, it is a layman's knowledge and I don't pretend to anything deeper. The motivating factor in my choice of material--that is, choosing to write a true account of an actual murder case--was altogether literary. The decision was based on a theory I've harbored since I first began to write professionally, which is well over 20 years ago. It seemed to me that journalism, reportage, could be forced to yield a serious new art form: the "nonfiction novel," as I thought of it. Several admirable reporters--Rebecca West for one, and Joseph Mitchell and Lillian Ross--have shown the possibilities of narrative reportage; and Miss Ross, in her brilliant "Picture," achieved at least a nonfiction novella. Still, on the whole, journalism is the most underestimated, the least explored of literary mediums.
The New York Times
March 18, 2001
"The Real Nonfiction Novel"
By THOMAS MALLON
In her collection of essays, A. S. Byatt makes a case for historical fiction.
"... Byatt traces the trend -- discernible on this side of the Atlantic as well -- to several factors, including the novelist's desire 'to find historical paradigms for contemporary situations' ... The two-way street between fiction and history is, on Byatt's patrol, busier than ever. She notes that 'recent historians like Simon Schama have made deliberate and self-conscious attempts to restore narration to history' in books like 'Citizens,' and that, conversely, 'the idea that "all history is fiction" led to a new interest in fiction as history.' Uncertainties and mishaps abound, of course. Schama has been accused of emphasizing story at the expense of argument, and Byatt expresses doubt about Peter Ackroyd's life of Dickens, which seems to have anticipated Edmund Morris's 'Dutch' by a few years: 'The postmodern dialogues between biographer and subject . . . seemed trivial and false beside the mystery of the known facts and the unknown nature of the life being told.'"
"Still, Byatt believes that this is where the action is, 'that there is a new aesthetic energy to be gained from the borderlines of fact and the unknown.'"
Ummmm... as Science Fiction has always done?
Xopher: Snap! I thought of In Cold Blood too. It certainly reads like a novel.
You know, I forgot my favorite bookstore customer interaction story, which I swear is absolutely true.
Telephone: Ring, ring.
Me: Hello, [bookstore name]. Can I help you?
Little-old-lady-with-heavy-accent: I am lookink for ze book, How to Have Fantastic Sex.
Me (thinking): Yeah, right. Is this Bob?
Me (aloud): Uh, yeah, let me check. (Checks.) No, sorry, we don't have any copies on hand, but I can order one.
Maybe-Dr.Ruth-maybe-Bob: No thank you!
A few weeks later, the college newspaper ran a photo of Dr. Ruth, who was on campus visiting a relative who was going to school there.
So, I always say, when Dr. Ruth needs advice, she called me!
Yeah, I was aware of the movie with Michelle Pfeiffer, and even tried to convince the customer gently and non-judgmentally that she was mistaken as to the source material, but she just got more and more angry.
Like the guy who wanted our non-fiction department. Being that anything beyond the first 12 rows of the store was non-fiction, I tried to get him to be more specific. Are you looking for auto repair? History? Gardening? He finally tired of my help and shouted "No! Just non-fiction!! Wal-Mart has a non-fiction section!!"
While he was not one of the two customers I may have mouthed off to in my 7 years in books, as soon as he got out the door, I did mutter to myself something like, "I bow to the superior bookseller that is Wal-Mart."
Hmmm.
I took a class in "Creative Nonfiction" once.
From my bookselling days:
Customer came to the desk with an armload of "How to learn Spanish tapes." I prepared for her question, which in this situation was usually "which of these do you recommend?"
She started, "My family and I are going to Spain." I nodded encouragingly. She continued, "They speak Spanish there, don't they?"
I'm really not sure how long it took me to stop gaping at her like a fish before I said yes.
Then there was the woman with the screaming four-year old hanging off her arm who wanted to know if we had a copy of "Your Unruly Child."
One from a colleague, that actually turns the tables:
Our store was well known for its extensive computer books section. All the techies and programmers came to us. The clerk answered the phone. The caller's question was, "Do you have any books on unix?"
She, being rather new and not so computer savvy, dutifully typed "eunuchs" into the search engine. It's a case of the bookseller being possibly TOO literate.
The scary thing is, occassionally a customer would come in, wanting a copy of that book that someone talked about on the radio a couple months ago, the one with the blue cover, and I'd know what they were talking about and take them right to it. It's very impressive when you can swing it.
Yeah, I've been a unix administrator for years...I have inadvertently startled non-techy people by saying "I work with unix," or "I'm in charge of our unix environment" etc etc.
That confusion is the subject of a classic User Friendly cartoon...
New yap!
I wow at the Mad Ape Den:
http://www.madapeden.com
I saw the URL a way ago. It is not as hip to spy the FAQ -- if you are a hot one and yen to try the new way of gab, no irk is it on its own. I say it is big fun to get a new jot for old jot. Now I am as mad as Ape!
Your friend and mine Eleanor had, and maybe still has, a list of the titles people had asked for in bookstores. The two I really liked were:
Color Me Purple
The Autobiography of Malcolm the Tenth
Carrie: Actually, there are large parts of Spain in which people speak a lot more Basque, or Catalan, or Gallego, than they do [Castilian] Spanish.
My favorite,albeit depressing, bookstore query.
Middle-aged man walks in, wanders around, sighs a bit, then approaches the counter.
"Do you have any books on how to get divorced?"
"Yes," I say, heading for our Law section.
"My wife sent me to get one."
Oh, yes. It was the day after Christmas.
My beloved Somerville Public Library keeps an updated cheat sheet of books/authors reviewed on NPR and other radio talk programs just because they do get requests about "that guy who was talking about railroads last Thursday, he had a book with 'tracks' in the title' and so on.
Actually, I've been the guy in the last panel of the Sob Story. Sort of. I've repeatedly taken Fallon Blood books from the SF section to the front desk for reshelving. That's *very* much not where they belong.
I was reminded of the scene in The Big Sleep when Marlow is trying to figure out what the deal is with the phony bookstore. (It is a porno front, and a blackmail operation.) He asks for a "Ben Hur" 1850-- "with the errata on the 56th page." (I don't have it at hand-- that's not the exact quote.) In the movie the following exchange then occurs:
Philip Marlowe: You do sell books, hmm?
Agnes Lowzier: What do those look like, grapefruit?
Philip Marlowe: Well, from here they look like books.
Marlowe then goes across the street to a real bookstore, and the clerk there recognizes that "Ben Hur" is a contemporary novel.
The Autobiography of Malcolm the Tenth
This reminds me of James VI and I, which can be parsed in two ways.
Since this is an open thread: was anyone here at Ad-Astra this last weekend? My first con ever! Next time, I shall take a sharpie and write on my hand in big block letters:
ARE YOU TIRED? GO TO SLEEP! IDIOT.
And on the other hand, perhaps something about eating at regular intervals.
When they turned Alan Bennett's play The Madness of King George III into a movie, the producers removed the III from the title. Apparently they worried that people would otherwise skip the movie because they hadn't seen The Madness of King George I and The Madness of King George II.
Fabulous movie, by the way.
Sundre _ For me, it's not usually "Are you tired?", it's "Are you depressed, bitter, and sure that everyone secretly thinks you're the worst loser here, even worse than the guy who hasn't showered since 1997 or changed his clothes all weekend? GO TO SLEEP!!!!"
Of course, I *try* to go to sleep before that state hits, or at the first symptoms. I don't always figure it out in time. My most memorable crash, @ WFC Minneapolis also included an actual major gaffe, so i had a reason to feel a little embarrassed. In that state, I came inches from bursting into tears on a bunch of then-strangers. I got out in time, then realised what was going on. I woke up more ashamed I hadn't figured it out sooner than ashamed at the gaffe.
"the producers removed the III from the title"
Alternative: subtitle which read "may be seen out of sequence."
More Bookstore anecdotes:
I once had a customer come in and tell me, "I was at that bookstore down the street [Crown], and I asked for Dr. Spock and they pointed me to the Star Trek section."
My favorite customer was one that everyone else disliked. This old woman with a walker would come into the store once a week about 10 minutes before closing [6pm] and spend about 20-30 minutes looking around and asking questions before purchasing something. Then one day, the old woman came in at 5:50, and I told her that she could take her time today as we were now open until 8pm. She grinned at me and said, "In that case, I'll be back at a quarter to 8." [She stayed, of course.]
A memorable query:
"Do you have the Cliff Notes for The Adipose Trilogy?"
Sundre: those skills come with practice. Also, remember to shower, brush your teeth, and change your clothes at least once per 48 hours.
(I mention this as a point of information merely because these skills tend to be forgotten by many fans during the first rush of cons to the head. Please excuse me if you are not one of them :)
Joel said: I took a class in "Creative Nonfiction" once.
I did too. The professor and I didn't get on at all. :)
Connie - I think every bookstore and library should do just that. I don't know how many times I've wanted to check out a book I heard about on Fresh Air or some other show and couldn't conjure up enough info to find it. Then, at home with web access, I'd forget all about it. (Until, of course, I was next in the bookstore.)
Sundre, sounds like you had fun! I think the general rule is something like: eat, sleep, wash -- at least two every day. I will fall asleep where I am when I'm tired, so that's no problem, but I'll forget to eat.
Charlie: No, I think I had the basic hygiene stuff down, more through luck than foresight. Mostly I was disoriented because I found out that I was able to go at the last minute and had planned absolutely nothing.
I also kept forgetting to check my watch and missed a grand total of three greyhound buses on Sunday night, and ended up accepting a ride home from a generous soul. Perhaps it would have helped if the watch was not broken as well. I continue to learn.
That would be:
Adipose Rex
A young man, wandering the roads, mistakes his father for a Stuckey's Pecan Praline, with tragic results.
Adipose and His Colonus
The aftershocks of the former king's eating disorder lead to drastic GI surgery, and a form of peace.
Antiketone
In the midst of a war over vanity poundage, one of two sisters refuses to abandon carbs for the sake of protocol.
Yes, I know, but just be glad I didn't decide to musicalize it.
CHORUS:
Though Teiresias came and kneed you
That old seer couldn't see you
Now you're fat and ruined
You were better dead than plump
We'll have film clips past the jump
Thebans, please stay tuned!
I work in a medical Library. I'm not going to begin on the "the book I'm looking for is red" stories. There are times I really wish they wouldn't change the colour with each new edition.
Has anyone read Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"? I'm looking at the book review of it in the 9th of April Lancet which states that "it does not attempt to be science fiction". Given that the rest of the review suggests the book is an alternate history in which we have already perfected cloning, I get the impression that it has nevertheless succeeded.
Possibly the reviewer can't believe it could be science fiction because he believes it deserves to win the Booker?
*is irritated*
Mary Dell: User Friendly, for all its virtues, was late with the UNIX comment; cf the Dilbert ending "Tell the company nurse I said never mind." (You've also found me a new peeve; most crossovers tell you where to find the other strip, but I didn't find Sluggy Freelance for another couple of years....)
Andrew: Hollywood generally assumes low intelligence in moviegoers; e.g., presenting a movie titled Dangerous Liaisons.
The customer who came in requesting the sequel to "Pilgrim's Progress" caused my co-workers and me no end of amusement as we tried to formulate possible titles. My favorite was "Return of the Pilgrim: The Revenge". We were considerably more grim when we discovered there was a "sequel" - the spiritual equivalent of fanfic, published by a modern fundie press.
This was not the same customer who asked for "Pilgrim's Progress" by Paul Bunyan. Which, while a common mistake, never ceases to be funny, if for no other reason than the image of Babe the Blue Ox in the middle of a Christian allegory.
It's been my experience that more often than not, there is probably someone in the bookstore who can find that book that was on the middle round table, top tier, three months ago. Ditto for books on Oprah, NPR, and of various colors. It's certainly worth asking. The bookseller who finds your "book with the blue cover that wasn't on Oprah, but that one guy who's on Oprah all the time has a blurb about it" doesn't need a tip, but will appreciate a "Thank You!"
Synopsis of Adipose Rex:
Some twelve years before the action of the play begins, Adipose has been made King of Triglycerides in gratitude for his freeing the people from the pestilence brought on them by the presence of the riddling Sphinxter. Since Laiabout, the former king, had shortly before been killed, Adipose has been further honored by the hand of Queen Joulecasta.
Now another deadly pestilence is raging and the people have come to ask Adipose to rescue them as before. The King has anticipated their need, however. Freon, Joulecasta's brother, returns at the very moment from Kohlesterol's oracle with the announcement that all will be well if Laiabout's murderer be found and cast from the city.
In an effort to discover the murderer, Adipose sends for the blind seer, Tissues. Under protest the prophet names Adipose himself as the criminal. Adipose, outraged at the accusation, denounces it as a plot of Freon to gain the throne. Joulecasta appears just in time to avoid a battle between the two men. Seers, she assures Adipose, are not infallible. In proof, she cites the old prophecy that her son should kill his father, have children by his mother, and supersize the father's funeral feast. She prevented its fulfillment, she confesses, by abandoning their infant son under a pair of golden arches, high in the mountains. As for Laiabout, he had been killed by robbers years later at the junction of the three roads from Thorax, Lipid, and Abdomen on the route to Delphi.
Patrick Connors writes: "I would jump up and down and say "First post!" but that's immature and brings back a bad CompuServe memory, so instead I'll just ask how to get Pepsi off a Dell LCD flat-panel monitor."
When I clean my LCDs, I use distilled water on a clean, soft white sock. In a pinch, I'd use filtered water (Brita, etc).
The definition of the Ishiguro novel as sf-or-not is only -- or, perhaps more correctly, merely -- one more iteration in a long series of such definitions, by authors and others. (I am always reminded of Randall Garrett's definition, within is particular alternate history, of Black Magic's distinction from the non-Black sort as being "a matter of symbolism and intent.") It does seem to have rather more to do with the commercial consequences of such labeling (and that would certainly include Booker qualification) than content; Robin Cook, who had neither science or talent going for him, insisted that Coma, a novelacrum he admitted had been written, Lincoln's Doctor's Suburban Housewife's Dog fashion, to chase the Times list, was not science fiction, but "fiction science."
Maybe what we need, if indeed we need anything in this regard, is a criterion, called for the moment the Lucian, after either the guy from Samosata or the Keeper of the Pseudobiblia; a Lucian-positive work may be shelved in the room with the prominently finned rocket and the ringed planet if the librarian so chooses, if there is such a room, and if one chooses to define what said room has as shelves in the proper sense, while works classified as Lucian-negative are, of course . . . somewhere entirely else.
No, I don't want to be on the panel. I'll be down in the bar, drinking double Taliskers with Hypatia on the side.
Alex: My family owns a used bookstore... we get queries like that all the time (minus the bottom shelf part).
No author, no title, vague ideas of when it was published, the genre and that's it.
Scarily we are often able to suss out the desired tome.
TK
My memory of Coma, which I think I read once while babysitting, was that it was just a medical thriller. Nothing outside current technology. You could say it was a whatif kinda of a story, but it's really pushing it. Whereas this book posits a different reality where biotech advanced faster than nuclear tech in the post war period. That sure fits a lot of definitions of science fiction.
What, a nonfiction novel like The Celestine Prophecy? That was a huge hit when I owned my bookstore. Despite my eye-rolling in private, I kept it stocked and it kept selling. Only I stocked it in fiction because, damn it, it's fiction--and at least once a week I'd find the copies had been surreptitiously moved to the nonfiction section by 'helpful' customers, some of whom even went to the trouble to make it a face-out.
Grrrrr.
Not news that Tor is cooperating to make reading available to the deployed - but praise for Nielsen Hayden from Glenn Reynolds may be worth noting.
One of my friends once confided to another, "I was hoping to have dinner and a really romantic evening planned out for [boyfriend]. Do you know where they keep that kind of books in this store?" Blushing, the second friend admitted that he and his girlfriend did, in fact, know where they kept "that kind" of books in that store and led her straight to the erotica and sex manual section. Whereupon she looked at the books and looked at him and said, "Cookbooks. I was looking for cookbooks."
I really doubt she's let him live it down by now. She's just that kind of friend.
Because my mind is running that way, I guess: when I was 14 or 15, I was alarmed to discover that the fantasy novel I had bought used was the other kind of fantasy than what I was looking for, despite the fact that it was called Merlin. I didn't know what to do with it -- I'm opposed to throwing away or otherwise destroying books even if I don't want them, and I didn't want to try to resell it to a used bookstore only to have them look more carefully at what exactly that is you have young lady and where did you get that and does your mother know you have it. And anything vaguely Arthurian on my shelves at the time got snapped up by my mom the minute I was done with it. I ended up returning it to the library in a pile of actual library books, on the theory that the librarians were unlikely to destroy books either and could deal with it as adults.
The advice I've heard for dealing with cons is that you [i.e., the semi-typical North American con-goer] need a minimum of five hours of sleep and three meals a day, or three hours of sleep and five meals a day. (No, this does not mean you can sleep eight hours and fast, or eat every three hours and not sleep all weekend.) Note that neither alcohol nor caffeine, by itself, counts as a meal. Neither do M & Ms or Gummi bears.
I just took a look at the "few words on Roger Elwood". As far as I can tell, it's a perfectly reasonable article, with no obvious errors (though I'm no expert on the subject)--it just feels slightly un-Wikipedia-ish, notably in the "this writer" usage, though the writer does adhere to Wikipedia custom by not actually signing zir work.
Wikipedia stubs are certainly getting longer.
Replying to myself: Teresa, I'll defer to your expertise on Elwood. Is that a complete rewrite? And can you think of any reason I shouldn't remove the "stub" label from that article?
I was alarmed to discover that the fantasy novel I had bought used was the other kind of fantasy than what I was looking for, despite the fact that it was called Merlin.
By Robert Nye? Or an actual nudge nudge say no more you also have to buy a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soulless and something by Ann Coulter to stick it between so people will understand what kind of person you really are book?
I would recommend Nye, but only to people whose taste I already understood.
Those special retail moments. My favorite was when I worked in a record store. A woman comes in and asks, "I don't remember the name of the band I'm looking for..."
I interrupt her and say, "Here it is." I reach into the cd rack immediately to my right, pull out a cd and hand it to her. She looks at me amazed and asks me how I knew that Breeders cd was what she was looking for as a gift. I said I didn't know and walked away.
Either I have powers of mind control, I'm psychic, or most likely I am extremely lucky at the most unspectacular moments.
On the camel story:
There's a very serious side note. A young Australian woman by the name of Schapelle Corby is currently on trial in Indonesia for drug smuggling, possibly facing a death sentence. She claims that someone else put the drugs in her baggage, and this story demonstrates the absolute plausibility of her claim. Here's a link to a recent news story.
Open thread . . . completely left field:
We had a one-day strike at the University of California at Santa Cruz today (mostly to do with the University not negotiating in good faith with the support staff). I won't go into huge detail here because I wrote my impressions up at length already.
But -- the intersection at the main entrance was absolutely full of people. The nice fellow's been working there for thirty years and they've tried to get things going before, but this was huge.
Along the lines of the "red book on the bottom shelf" question...
I buy at local non-chain (Hi, Dwayne!) bookstores whenever possible. However I was in a B&N "Superstore" two Christmases ago and they had a book on display which was the history of a mostly forgotten book on the sciences which was released under a psuedonym and which was so hugely popular that Charles Darwin is supposed to have delayed the release of "The Origin of Species" to make sure the new edition didn't force him into a rewrite. (I think that Gould mentioned it in passing in one of his essays.) I didn't see it at any other bookstore during the holidays, and when I went back to B&N the staff (of course) had no idea what I was talking about. Does anyone here know the name of the history of the book or the book itself?
Nerdycellist, CS Lewis did in fact write a book titled The Pilgrim's Regress.
Greg Horn:
Once I was hitchhiking through a state I'd rarely been in before. A driver stopped for me. I got in. For no reason that I could understand, a few minutes later, I said: "You're coming from your grandfather's funeral." He slammed on the brakes.
"How did you know THAT?"
"I don't know."
And I still don't. Episodes like these are very confusing for people raised as secular humanists and educated as scientists.
The last time a scientist talked seriously about this sort of event with me was last June at a Compexity Science conference. The gentleman was Brian Josephson, Nobel laureate in Physics. It is precisely his interest in such things that has led Cambridge University to deny him the right to be an advisor to doctoral students. Mustn't trouble the establishment with that stuff about, you know, consciousness, and that the universe might not work quite the way that our consensus agrees.
I've found that Science Fiction conventions are safe places to converse on such topics. And, thanks to our kind hostess, this blog.
AKICIF - Best way to get a useful as published electronic text from a publisher for revision on home equipment and software? Previous efforts failed for both the 5th and this 6th revision.
(it's all deductible/expensed if there is some ideal hardware/software combination - I have used only Interleaf/Quicksilver for technical publication and Word for creation/editing/circulation for comments in recent years myself)
Given an obligation to revise the 6th edition of a text book (not my book, I'm just doing research and technical assistance -ISBN 0-13-048110-6) for Pearson/Merrill/Prentice (not exactly where it started out) so the students can be gouged again the publisher's people (names on request) are to furnish a useful electronic of the as published for rework - preferably on a G5 Mac -
I have no idea what they use internally. The CD received shows a number of individual chapters as extracted to Word 97 - but on a Windows/Word machine it sure looks to me as though the chapters are extracted from a markup in which tags are translated to styles only occasionally usefully and often flat wrong. Mac isn't any better. There are a few chapters and front matter in a folder as unable to extract to Word 97 (the failures are reasonably corrupt for any file format with which I am familiar but with enough ASCI to recognize the text - headers with lots of font information and so forth and so on.)
Is there any useful reference or suggestion beyond simply asking (again) the publisher - to give us the entire text - with whatever divisions - in Word (contemporary Windows or Mac) file(s) where the print, print preview and print layout view match the book as published?
Words Into Type didn't cover this for me. Does Words Into Print or anything else?
Lucy: I know it's supposed to be a geode, but it looks like a glazed sour-cream donut to me.
Mmm. Donuts.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2005/s1345902.htm
"Three charged over Oil for Food programPRINT FRIENDLYEMAIL STORY
"AM - Friday, 15 April , 2005 08:26:00
"Reporter: John Shovelan
"TONY EASTLEY: The US Department of Justice investigating the scandal-plagued "Oil for Food" program today announced charges against three people, including a well-known Texas oil tycoon, David Chalmers..."
"The Department of Justice is one of several bodies in the US investigating the scandal, and today announced charges against a Texas oil tycoon, David Chalmers Jr.
"Chalmers is the owner of the Houston-based firm, Bayoil USA, and was arrested at his home this morning.
Prosecutor Joe Klochan alleged the three men indicted today were dealing with an enemy of the United States and could face up to 60 years in jail."
So why isn't Cheney arrested and in jail for the business that the company he ran did with Libya, Iran, and Iraq?!!
Clark, they probably use one of the publishing tools in-house: PageMaker or what-have-you, or else some proprietary weirdie. If the book is a technical reference, FrameMaker, TeX, and troff are also possibilities. One of the problems you will find, if you try to work with the final marked-up and set version, is that it cannot be reliably converted to MS-Word format; Word can produce some remarkably poor markup. Are you trying to produce a marked-up book, or just alter the text and let the publisher reset it?
... oh my God.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting the Particle on randomly-generated computer science papers. You made my week. ^_^
(With apologies for the interjection.)
Rebecca
My Opera browser shows google text ads and the choice of ads gives me much amusement - this open thread page, for example, shows an ad for PublishAmerica. (and on some Guardian columns page the ad invited me to write thank-you letters to Blair for his support of US troops in Iraq)
John M. Ford,
Where I work at Houghton College Division, a table has been set up to feature books that editors and other folks here bring in from home to 'sell' for proceeds that go to the United Way.
There, on the table this morning, I saw the Timescape hardcover first ed. of your book, The Dragon Waiting, which I abruptly snatched up.
Looking forward to it. :D
CHip:
Andrew: Hollywood generally assumes low intelligence in moviegoers; e.g., presenting a movie titled Dangerous Liaisons.
Okay, perhaps this demonstrates my low intelligence, but what's wrong with that movie title? Wasn't that the title of the American translation of the novel, and of the play? If there's a joke or a mistake there, I'm afraid I don't get it.
A link for the hard SF crowd (or anyone in need of a laugh): How to destroy the Earth.
"It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.
"This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity.... This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore."
Steve: The French title is Les Liaisons dangereuses. How hard is that for literate English speakers to understand?
Regarding the recurrent theme of SFA presses here, I can now proudly announce to have received my first offer to self finance publication of reviewed mathematical articles.
The solicitation begins
'Dear Professor Johansson,
Taking in mind your valuated achievements in mathematics, it is a pleasure for us to invite you to publish one work in "International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics".'
which is amusing in and of itself as I have not yet been even admitted to grad school, and goes on to tell me I can have my paper published in 5 weeks, for the bargain price of $10 a page.
Bruce E. Durocher II:
The book you're talking about might be Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by James Secord.
By the time Roger Elwood was finished, you couldn’t have sold an SF anthology into the North American market if it were priced at ten cents and made out of Godiva chocolate is very nice.
I worked in a B&N store for two and a half years and often got asked the blue book question. Oddly enough, half the time I knew what they wanted.
Most annoying were the requests for Oprah's Book of the month selections:
"What do you mean you don't have the new Oprah Book?!"
I'm sorry, mam, I was here in the store working when she told you what it was. Twenty minutes ago."
***
I remember one kid who handed me a list of books he had to choose from to do a report and asked me which was the shortest, easiest book that we had cliff's notes for. I handed him Moby Dick with a smile.
Not to be too picky, but Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress already includes its own sequel -- the second part was published six years after the first (1684 as opposed to 1678).
Clark,
If the files start with "IIXPR"—that's the letter I, not the numeral 1 at the beginning—or "MMXPR," they're QuarkXpress files. The former from the PC version, the latter Mac. Further details here, scroll down or search for "File Origin Code." I'm not sure what, if any, identifying headers the other publishing formats would have.
If they are indeed Quark files, you'll need to open them in Quark and export them for use in Word/rtf/choose your file format. InDesign is able to convert some Quark files. Adobe had a trial version available for download—probably long enough for you to export to your file format of choice if you want to avoid Quark. I'm a little rusty on my prepress formats as its been a few years since I escaped the trenches so there may be easier and/or more direct ways. Of course, this point is moot if they're not Quark files.
Note also that exporting text from a layout that was designed to suck in content rather than spit it out for revisions is often a royal pain in the behind.
Sorry to double post, but on third re-read, I realized that I wasn't completely clear about the "If the file start with…" part. By the start of the files, I mean the first characters in the file data, when opened in a text editor, as opposed to the file name. Follow the link for a more lucid explanation.
TexAnne: If Hollywood only marketed to literate English speakers, they would lose bigtime. The people they do market to probably would think it was about lesbians. And even people who understand the title perfectly well might not be able to pronounce it with confidence, thus defeating word-of-mouth.
Also, there was another movie with the title in the original. And a dumbed-down teenified version called Cruel Intentions. And probably there's a porn version, I don't know.
I knew about the CS Lewis "Pilgrim's Regress, but as for Bunyan's sequel - color me ignorant! The guy looking for the sequel wanted the depressing fundie version, which I believe involved simplified allegory.
As for movie titles, I'm kind of glad they americanized "Dangerous Liaisons." My french is abominable, and I sound like a total knob trying to pronounce french words.
Mr. Ford: I don't remember the author from this many years away. It featured a nun having a rather good time with a candlestick in the first 15 pages or so. I have a hard time thinking that would be particularly common with a given title, even one as broad as Merlin, so I offer it as possible identification. I have no idea whether the book had other features that would interest me now, but I was at the time a Nice Little Lutheran Girl, and when I got to the bit with the candlestick, I was done. At the time that was more nudge nudging than I was ready for.
My favorite bookstore story happened not to me but to my husband. There was a book out a while ago called The Cry of the Kalahari. This woman comes into the store, goes up to him, and asks, "Do you have The Cry of the Calamari?" And while he stares at her, open-mouthed, she goes on, "You know, it's about the Calamari Desert." He shows her the book, goes back to his (quietly giggling) co-worker, and whispers, "No! Not with linguini!"
Then there's the guy who asked for the book with the red cover, about a submarine. We actually figured that one out -- it was Hunt for the Red October -- which had a gray cover.
Mikael johansson:
The "International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics," with the bargain price of $10 a page, is surely Pure something. But not Shinola.
To anyone who thinks of submitting to it, in hopes of getting hired, promoted, or tenured sooner and thus receiving even indirect financial reward, I'd say: "Do the Math!"
TexAnne:
Steve: The French title is Les Liaisons dangereuses. How hard is that for literate English speakers to understand?
It doesn't matter. Christopher Hampton's screenplay was based on his play, also called Dangerous Liaisons, and the novel's been printed in English under that title since time immemorial. 1960 at least, by my spot search. So if you're going to blame somebody for translating the title into English, don't blame Hollywood.
Anyway, I don't see how this insults anyone's intelligence. The movie was produced in English. Do you go into bookstores with masking tape to "correctly" retitle the translations of Le Comte de Monte Cristo and Les Trois Mousquetaires?
Xopher wrote:
Also, there was another movie with the title in the original. And a dumbed-down teenified version called Cruel Intentions. And probably there's a porn version, I don't know.
Hey, I rather liked Cruel Intentions. It did have some wit and nuance to it; and it was fun to see Sarah Michelle Gellar doing evil. >8->
Man, it is zeppelin time with a vengeance! There's All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow. We just saw a theater print of Hell's Angels, that movie H. Hughes is working on at the beginning of The Aviator -- GREAT stuff with a zep crew bombing London. And yesterday, picked up a copy of John Crowley's newly collected stories at the library -- nice old photo on the cover -- yup, there's a zeppelin. These are just the ones off the top of my head. Something in the water?
CHip and TexAnne: in regard to Dangerous Liasons, why on Earth should an English-language movie have a French title? Sure, the original novel had a French title, but it also was in French.
Kate Yule:
There's an old saying that, when it's steam engine time, multiple people invent steam engines. Jung claimed that we share a common subconsciousness or that ideas have a life of their own, that somehow there is connection and purpose in the world.
It's Zeppelin time. We have to live with it. No time for me to tell the story of how my grandather got poison ivy very badly while watching the Graf Zeppelin come to New Jersey...
JVP:
It's Zeppelin time. We have to live with it. No time for me to tell the story of how my grandather got poison ivy very badly while watching the Graf Zeppelin come to New Jersey...
Someone in my writing/reading group also noted the preponderance of zeppelins in fiction right now. They seem to be in every alternate or reimagined history: The Years of Rice and Salt, The Eyre Affair... His theory was that they're a convenient, very plausible, and strikingly visual way of showing an alternate economy. My theory is that they're just romantic.
Re: Particle:
That's not Bible slash. It might better be called theological slash.
I was expecting something more like David/Saul....
And while we're at it: In what way does changing the name of the movie from "Madness of King George III" to "Madness of King George" demonstrate a belief in the low intelligence of American movie-going populace?
In fact, it's almost always true in America that movies whose titles end up in numbers are sequels, and a person shopping for a movie would be perfectly reasonable in assuming that a movie called "Madness of King George III" was a sequel to a sequel.
Also: I'm guessing that, for most Brits, the most well-known characteristic of King George III is that he went mad late in his reign. So a movie
named "Madness of King George III" would be a movie about an incident that's already reasonably well-known to Brits.
However, that is not George III's most well-known characteristic for Americans. Indeed, the movie doesn't even mention the events of George III's reign that Americans would consider most relevant. So, for Americans, the fact that the movie is about George III — as opposed to George I or George II or any possible follow-up Georges — isn't important enough to put in the title.
Harrumph. Wheeze. Rattling cough. Shake cane.
Metal Fatigue: I'm truly sorry about the doughnut image. It's the only geode I could find that I could work with. It's supposed to remind at least me of the H.G.Wells story "The Crystal Egg" which did something permanent to my head soon after I learned how to read and discovered the bookshelf in the living room had more in it than my father's old German nursery rhyme book.
Doughnuts are about the only thing-I-shouldn't-eat that I almost never have any trouble turning down. Even hot and fresh. Are you sure it doesn't remind you of a sliced bagel with too much cream cheese on it?
Well, my favorite example of Hollywood's contempt is from Christopher Lee:
When Hammer's The Devil Rides Out (1967), based on Dennis Wheatley's novel of the same name, was scheduled for release in the US, the title was changed to the cheesy Devil's Bride...guess why.
Because the suits assumed all of us dumb yokels out there would stay away from the movie in droves, thinking it was a western, not a horror film.
Hasn't Dangerous Liaisons floated around with both the French and English titles used? At least the title is the same in both languages, and is composed of two cognates.
On my "To Be Read" pile, in the "Struggle With a Language You Barely Know" subsection, I've got a couple of German translations of John Irving books, including Die wilde Geschichte vom Wassertrinker which is literally "The Wild Story of the Waterdrinker" but is a translation of The Water Method Man.
***
JVP - This is not the Zeppelinzeit, the current Zeit's Geist is all about the Spargelzeit! IHMO, the grandest Zeit of the year.
"Madness of King George III" Dept.:
"V" by Thomas Pynchon, assuming you've read "IV" already.
History of the World: Part I (1981)
aka "Mel Brooks' History of the World: Part 1"
John Farrell:
"The Devil Rides Out" (1967), wasn't that the sequel to "Guns Across the Acheron?" Or am I thinking of that Johnny Depp pirate flick, "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" (1995)?
Then there was the producer who told Harlan Ellison about his idea to remake "The Wiz" -- White! Hey, I know -- how about reshooting "Dangerous Liasons" -- but in France!
Whoops! Posted the wrong link for Spargelzeit.
Indeed, the movie doesn't even mention the events of George III's reign that Americans would consider most relevant.
It doesn't? That's curious. The war is definitely mentioned in the play -- the King is still furious over it, and his early fulminations are a foreshadowing of more pathological behaviors to come. It's not a central point, but it's integrated. (I saw the original stage version, and never went to the film.)
As a side issue, the title of the play is "The Madness of George III," which would make it a weensy bit likelier to be confused with a sequel, probably about a hockey-masked Hanoverian chasing Emma Hamilton pell-mell around Pall Mall with a trenchant chainsaw.
Hmm. Put Hugh Laurie and Miranda Richardson in that and you might have something.
Mris: Yes, that would be the Nye book, and no, it doesn't ease up from there.
Just there, before JMF's last post.
I just started a new contracting job. Today, I picked up the key to my office, which I seem to be sharing with someone whose name ends with "Haydn Nelson." It's somewhat disorienting.
Dept. for stupid unix tricks:
I made a tool for listing the posts referenced in the 400 Comments page.
First save the backthreads.html to a file. Then run this command from a terminal window:
grep '^on' backthreads.html |sed 's/.*0;\(.*\)&#.*/\1/' | sort -u
This trick should work on all unices, including OS X. Windows needs an add-on, such as Cygwin.
Mris: but I was at the time a Nice Little Lutheran Girl, and when I got to the bit with the candlestick, I was done.
Wow. I'm sorry for your younger self. I, on the other hand, was given a copy of The Valley of Horses (by someone who hadn't read the book and was under the mistaken impression that it was a nice story for a horse-mad kid) when I was about 12, and you could not have pried that book from my hands if you'd knocked me unconscious first, despite my disappointment in the paucity of horses.
I enjoyed reading the entry on the Tolkien sarcasm term papers. A fellow knitter here, just dropped by to say hello.
Thanks for the heads-up. The offending spam has been taken out back and shot with oversized hollow-point rounds.
Nonfiction book about extraterrestrial insects? Sounds like Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.
Oh hey, speaking of book searches...when I was very young, I had a book of SF illustrations, mostly spaceships. I can't remember the artist or the title, but I do know that one of the paintings from that book also wound up as the jacket of the hardcover edition of Melissa Scott's Dreamships.
(And why won't the comment box let me put in the <cite> tag? It's perfectly harmless.)
Steve, Mary Dell, et al: the play, as presented in English in London and NYC, was titled [Les?] Liaisons Dangereuses. IMO, the movie (which was a direct consequence of the success of the play) should have had the same title; there was some comment at the time.
So we aren't allowed (per thread 13) to make comments about triple triskaidekaphobia. But are there no John Buchan or Alfred Hitchcock fans here to pun? I shall have to take steps....
The really intriguing thing to me about the zeppelin scene in Hell's Angels was the degree to which it made the Germans sympathetic characters. Plus, it blowed up real good.
Lisa Goldstein: Then there's the guy who asked for the book with the red cover, about a submarine. We actually figured that one out -- it was Hunt for the Red October -- which had a gray cover.
Well, yes. The wiring between our color words and color perceptions is weirder than it seems. I've seen a T-shirt that has the words
greenprinted in bright red, orange, blue, red, and yellow (or some other permutation--I'm not sure it matters). The challenge is to say what colors the words are. Sounds easy, but it makes your mouth go funny. Not terribly relevant to your anecdote, but interesting?
blue
red
yellow
orange
Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
"Nonfiction book about extraterrestrial insects? Sounds like Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials."
Or maybe... "BEMs and Bugs: A Dummy's Guide to Debugging SETI Code on those Free Quantum PCs from our Alien Arachnid Overlords."
Dan Hoey and Lisa Goldstein:
That T-shirt thingie has been proven to slow cognitive processing in laboratory tests.
"the book with the red cover, about a submarine"
"We All Live in a Yellow Submarine", by Mao Tse Tung? Or maybe "Das Boot: The East German Edition?" Lady in Red; trouble ahead...
JVP: It was painfully obvious that it was a vanity operation of some sort. What makes it slightly more aggravating is that it fuels things like the Elin Oxenhielm debacle; where the fact that a claimed peer-reviewed journal accepted the article gave the TA all the ammunition she needed to throw a sexism/ageism slur on the fact that her proof simply did not check out. If I can pay for peer-reviewed publication, without the actual peer-review working correctly, I personally fear for the potential of abuse among crackpots.
Oh hey, speaking of book searches...when I was very young, I had a book of SF illustrations, mostly spaceships. I can't remember the artist or the title, but I do know that one of the paintings from that book also wound up as the jacket of the hardcover edition of Melissa Scott's Dreamships. (link added)
Heh. "I don't know the author or title.." But I do!
I had that book, too! Spacecraft, 2000 to 2100 AD: Terran Trade Authority handbook, by Stewart Cowley. It was built around a future history including a war with Proxima Centauri. Here's a web page about it and others in the series.. The illustrations from that book showed up as covers of SF books for years, and I think were created as covers first, then reused for the books.
A list of books that have used that art as covers, although it doesn't include Dreamships.
Mikael Johansson:
Having been accused of crackpotism in my youth, and now relatively immune to such criticism by the number of peer-reviewed publications that I've amassed, I have a certain investment in the status quo. Having tuned Conservative, in that sense, I am innately suspicious of radical assults on the nature of peer review in Math publication. The MIT Random CS Paper thing is screamingly funny to me and my kin. One of my Full Professor coauthors has edited one such pseudopaper in with fragments of our papers and citations, and we plan on seeing if certain journals and conferences will fall for it...
I have adopted certain edited web sites (not vanity, but not strictly refereed either) as friendly to my agenda, such as the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences and Prime Curios and had over 400 of my mathematical notions accepted and online-published by these. But that did not help me keep my part-time Math professorship, nor yet get me one of the dozen or so full-time tenure-track ones for which I've applied.
Okay, got to get back to another coauthor, as we are nearly done with a paper for the (peer reviewed) (online) Journal of Integer Sequences.
Pay to be published? *shudder*
That's "doing a number" on too many people already.
Vicki: for con advice, what I've usually heard is 5/2/1 (five hours sleep, 2 meals, 1 shower) --usually with a stern admonition that swapping the numbers does not work. OTOH, everybody has an opinion; I remember people leaving our party at Suncon to drive up to KSC to see a launch.
wrt the camel suit sidebar: at least he didn't try to wear it in the plane. When I was down under for Aussiecon II, a respectable-looking newspaper claimed to have uncovered an internal memo stating that a pole-vaulter's pole was not acceptable carry-on baggage, even if it would fit in the overhead bins. Can you imagine the Three Stooges - like episode that could have prompted such a decree?
CHip:
"Spread out!" commands Moe, and he, Larry, and Curly, carrying a pole-vaulting pole, stagger from pillar to post...
Steve Eley said: Someone in my writing/reading group also noted the preponderance of zeppelins in fiction right now. They seem to be in every alternate or reimagined history: The Years of Rice and Salt, The Eyre Affair... His theory was that they're a convenient, very plausible, and strikingly visual way of showing an alternate economy. My theory is that they're just romantic.
In a roleplaying game, I once played the Power of History. Eventually, we decided that zeppelins were a side effect of changing history. Didn't matter what you did, it caused zeppelins.
One of the other characters kept getting trapped on burning zeppelins for various reasons. Eventually it took its toll:
"I haven't seen you in three or four zeppelins--I mean days!"
Scientific Conference Falls for Gibberish Prank
Fri Apr 15, 8:32 AM ET Oddly Enough - Reuters
By Greg Frost
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - A bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference in a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
Well, if the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics rescinds the acceptance of the paper, they can always expand it to a book, and have it "published" by PA.
Bookselling flashbacks--oh boy!
The "I don't know the title and I don't know the author, but it has a blue cover" queries were pretty much a daily occurrence. Thank goodness for keyword searches on Books in Print.
The woman who wanted "That book on relationships that shows a couple running along a beach hand-in-hand at sunset, and they are in silhoutte, and I think it was first published in 1976" was out of luck, though.
A well-dressed, middle-aged woman came into the store one day and asked me if we had any books of synonyms. I couldn't leave the counter, but pointed to the reference section in the back corner and told her that's where the thesauruses were. She looked at me, confused.
"What's a thes
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